Published

Doctor Who 5×11 “The Lodger” Review

No sooner does the TARDIS land on Earth that it leaves again – but without the Doctor who had just stepped outside. The Doctor soon finds himself at the home of Craig Owens, who has been advertising for a lodger.

There’s clearly something odd in the house with people being lured to the upstairs room, but never reappearing.

This is a fun episode even though there isn’t much to it (literally, because the alien threat is practically nonexistent and Amy only appears in glorified cameos). Even though this is pretty “simple” by Who adventure standards, it’s still good. Seeing The Doctor outside of his normal role is entertaining.

You would think that being trapped on Earth would send him reeling, especially when the Time Lord relies so much speeches about seeing all of time and space, but here he actually gets a chance to thrive.

In fact, he thrives so much that he practically Single White Females his new flatmate.

Why, what a perfect segue into talking about Craig, this week’s short-term companion! Craig is pretty awesome. He’s such a normal guy in a way that the show, in it’s ever-growing effort to be bombastic, doesn’t feature very often. The chemistry between the two is surprisingly on point, and makes it perfectly understandable why Moffat would clamber for a second appearance by James Cordon in series 6.

Now, about that alien threat. It’s not a huge part of the episode, mostly festering in the background until things reach the boiling point right at the climax of the episode.

This is the perfect way to handle the threat, and the plot even offers up a little mystery as to what the deal with the half-built TARDIS is. (This might be explained visually later on in series 6, but I’m not quite sure, and it will require more re-watching to confirm…)